The ski jumping World Cup premiere in Szczyrk, Poland on Wednesday (January 17, 2024) fell victim to the wind.
After the jumpers repeatedly had to come off the beam due to strong gusts, the jury decided to stop after almost an hour and 45 minutes. At this point only 40 of the 50 athletes had made it down the jump. However, there was no longer any prospect of an improvement in the wind conditions. It had become too turbulent.
Everything was set for the first World Cup competition on the Skalite normal hill in southern Poland. The competition should be included as the fifth competition in the rating of the newly created PolSKi tour. But nothing came of it. The athletes repeatedly climbed on and off the beam because the winds were outside the corridor. Even adjusting the run-up length didn’t help much, it was too gusty and the air hit the take-off slope from a variety of directions.
A look at the wind points of the athletes who were able to complete a jump shows the different conditions in which the jumpers had to get off the jump. While the Italian Alex Insam was awarded ten points, Vladimir Zografski from Bulgaria was deducted 15.5 points. Converted into distance, that makes a difference of almost 13 meters – on a normal hill.
FIS race director Pertile: “We have to stay realistic”
The race director of the world association FIS, Sandro Pertile, justified the cancellation on the sports show microphone with the low prospect of improvement: “It’s always difficult to cancel a competition. But you also have to remain realistic. The weather forecast got worse and worse in the last few minutes.“The wind whistled along the jump at up to eight meters per second. Significantly too much to be able to guarantee the safety of the jumpers.”You have to accept that!”
There are no plans to reschedule the competition at the next tour stop in Zakopane. Only the planned team competition (Saturday) and the individual (Sunday) should be jumped there. In the Poland Tour, Slovenia continues to lead with 1,821.6 points ahead of Austria (1,759.3) and Germany (1,742.4).
Always long pauses
There were repeated delays in the practice round before the actual competition; the last jumpers only got off the beam a few minutes before the start of the first round. The jury needed almost half an hour for the first 13 jumps; after 60 minutes, 22 jumpers were still waiting for approval. Another break had to be taken before the final ten. But the conditions didn’t get any better.
Raimund dances – Leyhe with aching feet
Of the six German athletes, only three completed their jump. Constantin Schmid was first and wasn’t really happy with his 94 meters. “It was a bit difficult, you don’t know what’s coming, whether you have a tailwind or an upwind. Or whether you get a gust. That’s relatively difficult today; so far we can’t speak of a fair competition“, said the 24-year-old, who most recently competed in the second-class Continental Cup and, thanks to good performances, won an additional starting place for the German World Cup team.
Philipp Raimund, who wasn’t getting along very well with the jump these days, was pushed onto the slope at 85.5 meters. He had previously tried to keep warm by dancing on the jump steps when he had to wait so long for his turn. At the time of the cancellation, Stephan Leyhe was in fourth place after a decent jump in solid conditions and 99.5 meters. And that even though his feet were already aching from waiting.
The three remaining DSV eagles Karl Geiger, Pius Paschke and Andreas Wellinger had to pack up their things again and were no longer allowed to leave the jump.